


we are but the mark history left on us

by hiroshimalovers



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 13:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2775527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiroshimalovers/pseuds/hiroshimalovers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is blood on the pavement and Grantaire walks by because he is the past and his heart catches on the present.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are but the mark history left on us

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted to tumblr.

Grantaire’s fingers poke out of his threadbare gloves and the cold air swirls through his coat worn thin over years of use and he is not happy. There are whispers and there are mumbles and at night there are flashes of red coats and guns and a girl with dark swirls in her hair. He doesn’t remember whispering secrets of books he read too young, under his father's desk as boots fell heavy across the floorboards, a candle searing his hand. 

It comes back in deja vu and ghosts of sadness but he doesn’t know, really, and his back is hunched as if he is old and the lines across his face imply whimpers of death. Short nails dig into cold palms and the sky is grey. Once upon a time, it would have been recorded on canvas but Grantaire is an artist no longer, but rather a boy, a man, a corpse, looking at patterns, at history and never receiving an answer to the questions dancing around his neurons.

There are moments where he is hit with the fact that he is not anything, he was never a soldier and he is not a philosopher and is too far from a dreamer to ever wish. Ink stained pages dance across his fingertips as days pass, all so similar and dreary. The color has been lost with each set of eyes closed and they are brilliant blue but there is no one to compliment them. There hasn’t been for a very long time.

Once, there was a person with thin wrists and obsessive tendencies and Grantaire bit at their jaw as they thought about worlds that would never be. He wonders how they would like the days where the government is almost as good at covering things up and a million times more illegal. He wonders why he is the only one who wakes up time after time and his feet walk the ever changing pavements, and there is blood on the pavement and he wonders why why why and can’t do a thing.

In a building with uneven heating and clocks that are always off, he lives and he pages through books with words like consumerism and petrushka and imagines he’s crazy. It’s always been on the tip of his tongue, he’s always been a little bit wrong but here it is because he is old and then it was because he was queer and maybe that carried over too, with jumping at loud noises and his throat catches on the strangest things.

He falls in love with a tattoo of a dragon peaking out a barista’s shirt and she is short but her laughter feels loud but his gut curls around the idea and he never comes back to that place but instead watches a boy with beautiful hands twist them around a razorblade as a man whispers insults and sees someone with a notebook full of the phrase “A minus” six times on every line in tiny, precise writing. It is all little things and they remind him of a past that maybe wasn’t even his.

A train passes and there are gunshots in Grantaire ears and he does not stop but he does falter and there are not yet tears but all he can think of is how they held hands as shots were fired and he steps out of the station and it is raining. It is raining and he is not breathing he is not walking and people brush around him.

The city is loud around him and he thinks about drinking too long ago and wonders when he became so lost.

He wonders where he lost himself and later he will realize it was a long long time ago. 

He stands in the rain and cries.


End file.
